


Honey

by You_are_not_my_division



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (BBC Radio)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Artist Sherlock, Ballet Dancer Sherlock, Chance Meetings, Genius John, Inverse AU, Inverse!John, John Makes Deductions, M/M, Musician Sherlock, Rugby Captain John, University, University Student Sherlock, inverse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 11:50:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7639090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_are_not_my_division/pseuds/You_are_not_my_division
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody knew about John’s secret Sherlock Holmes journal. Nobody needed to know how he deduced and categorized every detail about the talented yet oblivious Sherlock. Nobody needed to know that John adored Sherlock from the first time he saw him. </p><p>Nobody needed to know that John loved Sherlock Holmes.</p><p>Johnlock one-shot with epilogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sherlock Holmes

_The light shining from behind him forms a halo that peeks through curls. The curls are denying the light, but cannot resist the golden honey that spills from the outside of their silhouettes. It trickles down and illuminates the bit of hair that it can touch, exposing its chestnut color, despite how passionately and ardently it works to conceal itself as black. That is very much a metaphor for the man himself._

_To name his skin as porcelain would be to do it injustice. Porcelain is breakable; it’s perfect, faultless, smooth, sleek, refined. This skin is not. The honey that so softly exposes the secrets of his locks does an equal justice to his skin. It is the sand on a vast beach, glistening like sweat under the sun’s harsh heat. It is the hide of a newborn cheetah, concealing an unspoken power. It radiates warmth and lethality. That is very much a metaphor for the man himself._

_His skin parts for his lips, the bridges between the brain and the beauty. It holds the poison he uses to coat his words, heralding beautiful destruction. The sun’s honey cannot reach his lips, nor does it even try. Oscar Wilde wrote of him, not of Dorian Gray, when he etched his eternal lines: "the curves of your lips rewrite history." His lips are gilded in a vintage rose gold, magnificent in its jagged edges. That is very much a metaphor for the man himself._

_This man is a predator of the highest degree, and his most brutal ammunition is his eyes. They are the of blue found when a storm whips the rain around you as you try to stay afloat, the blue that swaddles you when you dip under and lifts you back up to breathe. The kind of blue that terrifies you and captivates you when you get lost in it. They are sirens luring you closer and closer towards their jagged, deadly truth._

_That is very much a metaphor for the man himself._

_His body exposes secrets that I have no right to know._

Nobody knew about John’s secret Sherlock Holmes journal. Nobody needed to know.


	2. John's Diary: Sept. 5

**_Sept. 5_ **

Dear Future John,

I’m not foolish enough to believe in love at first sight, but I’m foolish enough to believe in love at first words.

I’m writing this entry so that a future John, a braver and a stronger John, can reflect back, and learn from this mistake.

It was innocent enough, the way I glimpsed the intoxicating portrait of perfection, the way I discovered this lost statue of Adonis. My family was low on money; I was approved for work study. I waited too long to apply for jobs at the University, and was left to spend time tutoring or cleaning some of the Arts studios after nine each night. Tutoring wasn’t an option, as I could too easily let a comment or fact I shouldn’t know about a subject I hadn’t yet taken classes in slip past through my barriers. Cleaning was properly up my alley. It was like surgery: methodical, precise, practiced, natural. Silent.

I need to get _every_ detail of this correct. I can never forget this this moment. Bear with me, future John, please.

It’s the third week of the fall term, now, and today was my first cleaning assignment. There were four other cleaners on duty, so I only had four rooms to clean. Of course, one of those was one of the massive main dance studios, and I’d heard from a few of the older lads that the floors were always slick with sweat and often with the blood of overworked toes. Naturally, I saved that for last.

That was how I got there, dragging my sloshing bucket behind me. My bones ached and sang out their frustration, and my eyelids drooped. My mind still whirled from the Chemistry exam (all of the ruddy knowledge that was hoarded in my mind didn’t make me into a good test taker), and things were...slipping. 

“Damn it, Watson. Wake yourself up,” I grumbled, rubbing my eyes ferociously, stumbling down the worn wooden hallway. The eggshell white walls were peeling, save for the bold and newly painted dark red stripe that raced John. I was exhausted, and the deductions I couldn’t stop raced past my eyes:

_Fresh paint, about two weeks old, since it’s still crisp, not yet dulled by passing bags and bodies, but not new enough to hold the smell and the shine, and the lines are uneven, but the trembling pattern in the silhouette suggested that it was all painted by one person, a person who was working nonstop for many hours, since the end of the hallway seemed to be more even and steady, but after hours of working, began wearing out, and only painters truly down on their luck, penniless bastards who happened to have the right supplies, would have companies large enough to be enlisted by a university but all done by one person, and the university probably hired them because they could offer much lower rates, skimping out on all possible expenses, as it usually does, but any money was good money to this lonely and poor--_

Get a hold of yourself, Watson, I chided myself. I worked too hard to discipline these deductions. Couldn’t have them slipping all over the place, not when the deductions only seemed to find the worst in humanity. I couldn’t live like that. I’d go mad, sociopathic. Control, John, I said. Control it.

So, I shook my head, slapped myself on the cheek a few times, and turned the corner towards the Dance wing.

The Arts building was still foreign enough to be complicated, despite my mind having memorized the map instantly and without my consent. It was shaped like a trident, with many of the main classrooms held in the main entrance, along with several theaters; from there, it split into three main wings: dance, music, and art. Each wing had sub divisions, but these sub divisions weren’t clearly marked, so they had led me down the wrong path several times. But Dance Room 4, that couldn’t be too difficult to find, I reasoned. If I could stay awake to find it at midnight, when I rightfully ought to be sleeping, it wouldn’t be difficult.

The hallways were now decorated with dramatic portraits of forms and poses, galleries of university protege who had continued onto the largest dance halls across London, America, China, Japan, and practically every other first world country. The newly painted bold stripe continued through these halls, and I blocked myself from deducing what that might infer.

I managed to find Dance Room 4 after a few wrong turns. The old black clock held its arms at the 12 and the 4 stubbornly. It might as well been holding its arms on its hips and scolding _John Watson, you get to bed this very instant, you have an 8 AM class that you know you can’t miss!_

“Trust me, I’m trying,” I replied to the clock. That seems a bit worse on paper than it did in my mind. I’m not going crazy--it was just sleep deprivation, Future John. I pulled on the handle, yanking the obscenely heavy door open and slamming it shut behind me. The tinkling of music registered too late for me to lightened the loud crash the door made as it returned to its frame.

“I have the space reserved, and I’m working until...oh.”

Oh, the way that time itself stretched around his fingers, docile to his whims, lagging slowly as I first met his eyes! He stood in a loose black shirt with _Yes, I am one of those ballet kids_ in bright yellow and white Arial font printed across the front, and there has never been any man who has witnessed anything more beautiful. He was momentarily suspended in a pose, but shifted back to a resting position with toes cocked outwards, as if they were comfortable standing so awkwardly. Curled black hair simply floated around his head like a halo, as if holding him up, and he glared at me with an annoyed glance. 

_Hasn’t slept in at least 14 hours, judging by the dull eyes and bags, but twitchy movements suggest at least 3 cups of coffee consumed in that time period, and stress is evident, but not overwhelming, he holds himself with the posture not of a dancer but of a high class child trained by a grammar teacher, but his willingness to allow his feet to splay so uncomfortably suggest that he doesn’t care much for proper posture and manners, his shoes reaffirm that he is high class, seeing how they are relatively new but seem to have experienced intense wear in the toe, so he has been abusing them since the recent purchase, but they’re expensive ones, and he doesn’t seem to care that he’s ruining them, which leads to--_

“Sorry, mate,” I managed to mutter, as silly and uncoordinated and purposeless as a newborn deer figuring out how to stand. “Cleaning duties.”

“I have the room reserved until six, and I perfectly intend to stay in here until then. Clean what you must, but don’t get in my way.”

With that, he turned his attention away and returned to the music tinkling through his phone speaker like water falling through rocky rapids. The baritone of his voice held stagnantly in the air, the deep and clear vibrato evidence of some degree of musical training. 

Now, future John, is where the idiotic mistake comes in.

Awake for at least 14 hours, and still planning to stay until dawn? You could have said something. Sure, it may have gotten on his nerves, seeing how he was practicing, but it would be enough to start a conversation. Even if you didn’t want to comment on that, ask how far his routine would take him around the room, as him if there were any sections he wouldn’t need, so you could clean them. Remark upon the weather, or how difficult chemistry is. Anything, John, _anything_ to entice this siren to sing more of his song to you.

Instead, I fought the flush in my cheeks as I took the mop from the bucket and abused the floor at the distant end of the room.

The dance studio mirrors allowed me to glance up and watch him without being noticed, to trace his figure as it leapt and curled across the floor. I pushed deductions from my mind as I watched his body contort like liquid art, bending to the will of the Muses. The dance spoke more loudly than the melancholy music, screaming through outstretched arms and clutches at the air, mourning with languid pirouettes and running leaps. Every muscle was under his command and was carefully controlled.

He had all the airs of a thunderstorm with the passion of a tornado and the grace of a tsunami. I saw him, and I knew that I needed to document him. I knew that if every writer in this world dedicated their lives to him, that his grace could not be properly explained. That if every composer set to capturing his essence in a song, it couldn’t capture the way he twirled.

I hope that Future John doesn’t consider this passage to be creepy or stalkerish. As we both very much know, people like these don’t stumble into our lives often. The people who captivate us, who make us want to run as quickly as possible in the opposite direction when they forcibly pry open our mind’s faucet, but whose very breath locks us into place. It was something that needed to be written down before it felt too surreal for me to imagine it as anything more than a graphic dream. This _happened_. This magnificent creature is existing, breathing and dancing and being, and you are letting him slip away.

You made a mistake, future John, when you wiped the floors on your side of the room, tucked in the chairs, cleaned the mirrors, and walked out without so much as a goodbye, or have fun practicing, or goodnight.

Dear God, should you exist: though my deductions may lead me to doubt you, this one act, this miracle, will silence them forever. Let me cross the path of this man again, and give me the strength to not be as unabashedly idiotic.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! 
> 
> This is my take on the Inverse!AU trope. In this universe, John has deduction skills, and Sherlock does not. I wanted to play with the concept to see how lacking deductions would impact Sherlock, and how the power of deduction might change John.
> 
> Please leave comments if you're excited about the work or have questions!


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